The Internet as an artifact with politics:- Case study of China

In this post, I shall talk about a)what were the intentions of the chinese government behind the introduction of the internet in the country, b)What properties make the internet a dangerous artifact in a communist nation, and c)What measures have been taken by the Chinese Government in tackling the political issues that arise from the very prescence of the internet in the country. 

Why China?

There are more internet users in China( around 400 million users ) than there are people living in the U.S.; and over 36 million people got wired onto the net, making it the largest and fastest growing network in the world. Besides, being a communist nation, the internet poses a threat to the very construct and ideology of the chinese government, making the internet an artifact with a very strong political influence.

What makes the internet an artifact with politics?

To understand this, let us compare the internet with previously existent media for communication. We have seen the speed with which rumours spread by word of mouth, but it does have constraints such as distance. The telephone/mobile services is constrained to speech and SMS, but they go a step further in terms of distance. If the cost incurred is considered, STD and ISD calls are expensive, and thus distance is also a constraint in these services. Man's next greatest media innovation is the television network, where distance is no bar and the information transfered has the extra dimension of visual content. It is mind-boggling how quickly information is transfered through the TV network. But setting up a TV channel is an expensive affair, thus reducing the no. of channels.

And then came along the internet. Add distance-coverage of the TV network, price of the telephone network and the ease with which a web-page( channel ) can be created, and we have got ourselves an uncontrolled chain reaction. It starts with the sheer amount of internet content available to anyone hooked onto the net, which comes as a direct consequence of the ease with which a webpage can be created. Now that there are so many 'channels', it is easy to stay anonymous. This leads to a phenomenon wherein large no. of people maintain their anonymity, thus giving themselves the right to express freely and spread any sort of content. Ideas manifest and spread like wildfire. This makes the internet, more or less, the most politically influential atrifact that has ever existed.

Politics of internet in China

Computer networking began in China with the intention of helping science and research. The first networks include the Institute of High energy Physics Network( IHEPNet ) and China Academic Network( CANet ).The Chinese first-people decided to use this platform to introduce the internet with the intention of boosting economic planning, elctronic commerce and improving science and research.

But they soon learned that the native Chinese could access webpages based abroad as easily as those within china, which led to the fear of the idea of 'Democracy' manifesting itself inside the country; a death blow to the communist regime. Even a small slip-up could cause this idea to spread across all over the chinese populace, creating organizations, cults and terrorist groups that would attempt to over the chinese premier and change the political structure of the nation-state. Thus, censorship became a topic of utmost importance in the country.

What measures were taken?

The Chinese government started their censorship, first by making the market of ISP's( Internet service providers ) a monopoly run by the government, thus ensuring that they framed and fully controlled the censorship and the respective policies. There exists a State council decree which requires ICPs( Internet Content Providers ) to provide, upon demand by authorities, all content that appear on their sites, and records of users who have visited them for upto 60 days prior to the request. There has been a crackdown on pornography, gambling and content put up by counter-revolutionary forces.

There have been many incidents where the government has arrested people for the content posted, and they have mostly been done so as to send out a warning to the public. Officers of Sohu.com were raided as users found links to pornography. Lin Hai, a software Engineer, was arrested for emailing to a pro-democracy newsletter based in the U.S. Huang Qi was arrested for posting content on the 1989 Tiananmen square incident, wherein over 100,000 people participated in a peaceful protest, which was eventually cracked down using the military. This website is based abroad and so it is always up-to-date with his trial. He can spend upto 10 years in prison.

But the most influential political problem that the government faced as a direct consequence of the internet was the "Falung Gong". This was initially a spiritual exercise group, much the same as 'The art of living', but in 1999 it quickly grew into a cult. The website responsible was created by their leader, who was previously exiled in 1995, and is based in the U.S. and is entirely in the chinese language. All the staged demonstrations were coordinated through the website.

Now here's a little exercise. Google Liu Xiaobo. Then, in a separate tab, go to the china daily website and search for the same name. Now compare the no. of hits in each page. The result would surprise you.

-- Amit M. Warrier

References:-
Shaping the Internet in China: Evolution of Political Control over Network
Infrastructure and Content
Eric Harwit; Duncan Clark
Asian Survey, Vol. 41, No. 3. (May - Jun., 2001), pp. 377-408.

We Open Governments

"We open governments", this is the slogan of, what by a long shot, is probably one of the most controversial and talked-about whistle-blowing organization of the decade, Wikileaks. Little did its founder,renowned internet activist and founder, Julian Assange know as to what epic proportions his brainchild would blow up to.

Origins

Started by a group of "Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and  start-up company technologists" from countries around the globe, the main aim behind setting up such and organization, through its website, was to convey to the public the atrocities committed by governments of various countries and to let the public know the truth, hard-hitting behind the scene facts which come from credible and reliable sources within the system.

Wikileaks the digital artifact

As an organization  it takes the freedom of the press and more importantly the freedom of expression to a whole new level. And in this way its a medium of free human expression qualifying it into the broad definition of a digital artifact. Now if seen from an angle to analyze the objectivity of the organization, this is a very interesting artifact because the sole purpose, the objective of this project in itself is the political viewpoints of a group of individuals.This means that the artifact in itself has no neutral angle for it to be seen from. Its to let the whole world realize the anguish of the oppressed people in such regimes.

Unforeseen consequences

The founders drew their inspiration from the need to substantiate democracy as a process, to let people know whats actually going on within some governments of the world, governments that these very people voted for, this is what drove them. In their defense they had every right to do so. But what they did not for-see was that some of  the cables leaked by them on the pretext of letting out the crimes committed by the military, they actually gave away some very crucial details pertaining to some covert-operations carried out by the military, thereby making public the names of some of the informers and trusted sources of information that the army had. This poses a very serious threat to the lives of these informers and  places their lives under serious threat and pushes important operations to the brink of failure.The flip-side here being that the monstrosities committed by some corrupt army officials on innocent civilians comes to light.hence there lie two sets of lives in the balance the civilians on one side and those of the informers on the other, this puts a big question mark on weather the intent of Wikileaks is actually justified. This is literally trading lives and no-one in their right mind should be allowed to play god.

Trust Issues

The other important topic that comes up, due to the release (by wikileaks) of the recent diplomatic cables which were exchanged between the embassies of the United States of America and its government create a myriad of trust issues both external and internal to the government. Firstly the 'source' that wikileaks got in touch with was an army intelligence officer named Bradley Manning here was an intelligence officer who couldn't stand the mode of operation of the army in Iraq and believed that society would be able to make better and more informed decision as to what government they choose to elect. The political consequences would be a whole lot different if say he decided to leak this information to countries like China or Russia who would value it dearly and this would strain the relationship between countries. Now governments face a new kind of espionage, people in their own camps who are fed up the way the government functions, now instead of going to the opposition which is rather unpatriotic will now prefer to let the public know what actually goes on within governments so that they know who they actually elected. This will create a lot of suspicion within governments to the extent that it will considerably affect their performance as a unit.
The whole concept of trusted and sound international relations between countries lies under threat, especially since the leaking of the diplomatic cables a lot of criticism was directed towards the U.S government because in some of the conversations between the embassies and the U.S government there have been many derogatory references towards many important international figures, as an example the Italian P.M Silvio Brelusconi was called many names during the exchange of these cables.





As a digital artifact Wilkileaks as an organization has its objective and purpose to open governments and let people know the truth but as with every artifact there have been numerous political consequences which were not foreseen which asks the important question as to whats the cost of knowing the truth, and if its really worth it. 

By

Vivek Subramaniam

Refrences:
[1]
[2]

Do Computer Games have Political Agendas?

Having started humbly in mid-1970’s, the computer video game industry has grown manifold to the present massive size. Just to get an idea, the industry took in about USD 11.7 billion in 2008. There are hundreds of video game developers in the industry today. This article provides a perspective of political themes and agendas in today’s computer games. Here, we shall look at computer games as a digital artifact from a sociologist's point of view.

Politics and Racism in present day Computer Games

With computer gaming being such a large industry and with so many companies in the market, how do these companies face the competition and sell their product? Well, there are many solutions. Improve graphics and gameplay, make the game for multiple platforms, widen the market and – this is what is interesting – “spice up” the game. What do I mean by “spicing up”? Let me explain.

Recent video games have been known to include sexual themes, violence, offensive language and stories with prominent political and racist themes. Tilting the story in favour of or in opposition to a particular political body or a particular ethnic group is a good strategy to gain popularity. Here are some examples I’m sure will throw light on how this is done and to what extent.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

One of the most awaited games in the First Person Shooter (FPS) genre till date, CODMW2 sold 4.7 million copies worldwide within 24 hours of its release on November 10, 2009. Personally, I loved this game. It has excellent gameplay, realistic graphics, good music and a gripping storyline. The game won many awards, but it also was mired in controversies surrounding its story and, in particular, the “No Russian” mission.

In the mission “No Russian”, the player plays the part of a CIA undercover operative Joseph Allen joining a Russian terrorist group. The mission takes place in a Russian airport, where the terrorists open fire mercilessly on hundreds of civilians. The player later participates in a gun battle with Russian FSB troopers. The bloody scene was banned in the Russian PC version of the game due to its extremely violence and anti-Russian story.

Also, an author noticed that the story of the game has the American Rangers always losing their missions and having bad luck and the multinational (mostly British) Task Force 141 always succeeding in their missions with sheer accuracy. In the end, 141 soldiers find themselves fighting the American “Shadow Company”, as the power-hungry American General Shepherd turns out to be the villain. Shepherd is finally confronted and killed by Captain Price of 141. The author feels that this cannot be a coincidence and that this “anti-Americanism” was intended.

There are a few other games too that I would like to mention. Call of Duty 4 has an air-to-ground shooting mission, which closely resembles a footage released by WikiLeaks of an incident in Baghdad, in which news reporters were gunned down from overhead by a gunship. The well-known criminal underworld game series Grand Theft Auto is an example of a game with racist themes. The game features gangs of African-Americans, Latinos, Cubans, Haitians and Chinese people, but no Caucasians. In Medal of Honour 8, the player plays a mission in which he is a Taliban character. In Left for Dead 2, the player has to shoot zombies that look suspiciously African-American.

 

Hidden agendas or just pure entertainment?

Do games have political themes just to increase sales or do they have a hidden political agenda?

Jake Diliberto, an Afghanistan veteran, says they sometimes do. After America lost badly in the Vietnam War, the government might want to up the international reputation of their military forces by making movies and computer games that brighten their image. This would make the world fear, or at least respect, America for their military capabilities. This would be a very clever way of establishing their superiority.

The developers of some games like Medal of Honour have directly approached military personnel for their expertise regarding firearms, military technology and tactics. While this may appear to support the above agenda to help the military, it could sometimes work the other way too. For example, it might put real-life soldiers at risk by exposing their ideas to the world.

Racist themes, on the other hand, may not have any strong political agenda, but their effect is equally damaging. Quoting the example from Grand Theft Auto, I think that the player is likely to lose respect for African-Americans and other groups in the virtual underworld. Since the battles are between different races in the game, the player may develop racist ideas and tendencies and this is dangerous.

But do all games have political or racist themes? Are political and racist elements in game stories always intended? Do they always big, hidden plans behind them? The answer is no. Most games are made just for entertainment purposes. The “spice” in the games is mostly intended to provide additional angles of entertainment. According to the famous author Dan Brown, “Everyone loves a conspiracy.” And everyone also loves a bit of violence too, as long as it is virtual.

So what should we do as gamers?

My opinion is that computer games are a good form of entertainment and that they should be treated as such. As long as the violence, politics and racism doesn’t get into our heads, there is no harm in gaming. Some governments go out of their way to ban the sales of controversial games, but it is really of no use because gamers will then go out of their way to get the games they want, illegally. As a democracy, we should be free to choose between good and bad.

By Pranav R Kamat

References:

Wikipedia: Video game controversy 

ISN Blog: Politics of Video games

YouTube video: Modern Warfare: Video game or reality?
GamePolitics.com

OverthinkingIt: The anti-Americanism of Modern Warfare 2

Politics of Artifacts - The Browser Wars

Introduction:
The wheel of technology rolls on with time. In our current age of information and interconnectedness, it has become imperative to understand its social and anthropological implications and connections. Contrary to the earlier held view, we have now started to realize that technology and
society are not independent of each other, but rather evolve dynamically, each shaping and influencing the other in ways both direct and subtle. Following Professor Langdon Winner's seminal paper titled "Do Artifacts have Politics?", we now appreciate that any new technology can both empower and oppress us. In the words of Bruno Latour, technologies offer us possibilities, affordances and permissions, and thus effectively participate in politics and need to be represented.

Politics everywhere?
Though it may seem counter-intuitive at first that artifacts can be associated with politics, evidence for the same appears in many places, if we only know where to look, and how. From the low hanging bridges of New York and the allegedly biased content of Wikipedia to the steep pricing of Apple products in Indian markets, one finds several instances of seemingly impartial technologies turning out to have a deep-rooted political or social motivation. Here, we must be careful since such artifacts always have an interpretive flexibility, and our interpretation of them may not necessary match those of its designer. Apple for instance, may simply be intent on maximising its profits and Wikipedia has so much data input that it may be difficult for it to continuously monitor its quality standards. Another example is Vaucanson's automatic loom, which some biographers ascribe as his way on exacting revenge on the silk workers who ran him out of town. However, the real reason may have been his intention of transforming the boundaries between intelligent and non-intelligent work. By looking at technology and society as a whole and not as independent entities, we can enhance our understanding of several artifacts and reason regarding whether or not a particular artifact is politically motivated.

A case study we consider is that of Internet Explorer, Microsoft's famous internet browser.

The browser wars:
Browser wars is a metaphorical term that refers to competitions for dominance in usage share in the web browser marketplace. The term is often used to denote a specific rivalry: the competition that saw Microsoft's Internet Explorer replace Netscape's Navigator as the dominant browser during the late 1990s. At this time, there were two major internet browsers - Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. Netscape, initially beginning with a large market share was a small company generating a good bulk of its income from what was essentially a single product. Microsoft's vast resources on the other hand allowed it to bundle its less popular internet browser free along with Windows for its users. Since at that time Windows had an over 90% share of the desktop operating system market, almost all the users who bought Windows stuck to Internet Explorer, having nothing to compare with and no particular advantage in switching over to Netscape.

While this strategy gained Windows dominance over the web browser market as well, some consider it an abuse of Microsoft's monopoly on operating systems to unfairly dominate the market and eliminate competition. Microsoft on the other hand, claimed that the merger of Windows and Explorer was inevitable, since the two were now the same product, and consumers were getting all the benefits of Internet Explorer for free. Here again we see the interpretive flexibility of a digital artifact. Is this Politics though? Can the actions of a company wanting to maximize its profits in a free market be considered politics? It's upto us to decide, and eventually culminated in the famous United States vs Microsoft series of lawsuits.

Conclusion:
The long held belief that technology and society evolve independently from each other has been conclusively shown to be false and the metaphor of 'the arrow of progress' leading from science to technology and eventually to social progress is no longer valid. As Arturo Escobar says, any new technology represents a 'cultural invention' in the sense that it brings forth a new world. It is from this new 'domain of anthropological practice' that we arrive at several conclusions about the inter-connectedness of society and technology, the relevant one in this essay being that artifacts do indeed, have politics.

References:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langdon_Winner
[2] http://www.bruno-latour.fr/presse/presse_art/GB-06%20DOMUS%2006-04.html
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars
[4] Notes on an anthropology of cyberculture, by Arturo Escobar

Firefox : From an STS viewpoint

  Today, Firefox is the world's second most widely used web browser (first being Microsoft Internet Explorer). As per the popular STS belief that technology is not something which is neutral, something which is 'out there' and impacts the society and culture; but is a part of culture and society, Firefox is no exception. In fact, firefox can be seen as a perfect example of digital artifacts having politics. It also illustrates how social and political situations impact a particular technology. Firefox is embodiment of the values and principles of free and open source software. Firefox showcases how a technological artifact evolves, and how it can end up doing something totally different from what it was supposed to do initially.

Times of darkness and monopoly :
  By late 1990s, Microsoft had the biggest market share in terms of operating system. In order to monopolize the browser market, Microsoft bundled it's low quality browser with the OS and thus each windows computer, by default had internet explorer installed onto it. This was a major blow to Netscape and the likes of it. 
 
How it came to be :   
   After a resounding success of open source software projects like linux and a detailed analysis of open source methodology by Eric S Raymond in his article "Cathedral and Bazaar", in March 1998, Netscape Communications Corporation released most of the code base for its popular Netscape Communicator suite under an open source license. This decision can be attributed to the goodness of open source methods as well as or more than that to Netscape's inability to cope up with the monopolistic practices by Microsoft. So, the Mozilla project was initially supposed to save Netscape suite from dying out. This point is important because what Firefox ended up being is (one can safely say) far more than what it was intended to be. Again, this just shows that once a technology is established, what new forms it can take and how it shapes the society is something which is hard to predict.

Impact of contemporary social and political situation :
  At the time when Firefox was released, Internet Explorer had almost total monopoly over the browser market. People did not have any good alternative. Also Internet Explorer was notorious for not following the standards which were agreed upon internationally, instead, IE appeared to believe in setting its own (incompatible) standards and force the content creators to follow them.
  Case of Firefox highlights the point that a new technology, however superior, has to suffer if the low quality technology it is supposed to replace is widespread and is not compatible with the new one. As every computer running windows had IE by default, content creators preferred to write specifically for IE than for standard compliant Firefox and the likes. Given the security, privacy and usability features of Firefox, nobody would be using IE by now if it was not forced upon the unknowing users by Microsoft.
  At the same time, among the tech savvy people, Firefox became extremely popular because they hated IE knowing how bad a piece of software it is and the hatred was increased because there was no other considerable alternative. Thus for these people Firefox was a way to vent out their hatred of IE.


Where Firefox stands currently :
  Today, 30% users use Firefox as their browser, this is a huge number considering that it does not come pre installed with windows. Due to its modularity and extensibility, Firefox has the largest collection of add-ons (small programs which enhance the browser in terms of looks or functionality). Not just that, but Firefox codebase has been used for totally unrelated programs. Some prominent examples are Songbird and Pencil. The former is a popular feature-rich media player while the later is a promising and flexible graphical user interface prototyping tool.
   Firefox has been pioneering for standard compliant web and has done a great job of proposing standards for the future of the web. This has a direct impact on the user. Standardization means that there will no more be messages on websites saying "Your browser does not support X technology, please use Y browser!" As for the content creators, it means no time waste checking for cross browser compatibility.

Firefox as perfect 'softwarification' of underlying philosophy :
   Firefox is based on the concept of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). As per FOSS ideals, a software must allow its user to modify it and use it the way he/she wants. According to FOSS, the right to modify and alter the software is a fundamental right of the user. Although any open source software can be (so to say) modified by anyone, there are certain practical issues. The code of the software must be modular, well documented and well organized for a user to be able to modify it easily. In the true spirit of FOSS, Firefox is an example of a extremely well organized and extensively documented neat code. This combination is rare and when achieved, unleashes the full potential of open source software. A notable example of this can be found on this blog, where the developer of one of the most popular add-ons for Firefox, no-script talks about how difficult it is to make an equally powerful script blocker for the Google Chrome (note that Google Chrome is also an open source browser). The huge number of add-ons available for Firefox testify that.
  Also, for its latest release, Firefox has gone lengths to ensure that the release is as user friendly as possible. The idea of test pilot, where a user gets to test new features and register his/her opinion about it in a very layman friendly way, is very innovative and takes Firefox even closer to its core ideology of FOSS.

-Sujeet Gholap (CS09B010)

References :
[1] History of Mozilla (wikipedia)
[2] History of Firefox (wikipedia)
[3] "Cathedral and Bazaar" by Eric S Raymond
[4] Usage share of web browsers (wikipedia)
[5] "What is free software" by  Matt Lee

Wikipedia : Does it have Politics?

Introduction
  
It this age of global connectedness, when significant amount of people are 'wired' to the Internet  it is important to study its social and anthropological implications. With reference to Professor Langdon Winner's seminal paper titled "Do Artifacts have Politics?", in this blog I will  speak about the political implications of the most popular reference site on the internet. There is nothing more political than influencing the way people think, with that respect Wikipedia stands at the top of all 'digital artifacts'.  

Wikipedia is a freely licensed web-based multilingual encyclopedia which is collaboratively written and managed by volunteers all around the world. Wikipedia works on an open 'wiki' model, that is, anyone can edit it anonymously. Wikipedia was created in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger and it grew into the most popular reference work on the internet having more than 365 million users. With more than six hundred thousand articles, Wikipedia is among the top ten most visited sites on the internet; thus forming a major influence among internet users today. Thus it become  very important to understanding it anthropological implications.

Is the information in Wikipedia reliable?

Wikipedia works on an 'anyone can edit' policy; so the information in Wikipedia is generally the one agreed upon by the most of the editors. Lack of authority and chaotic nature of the community leads to inaccuracy of the information. Wikipedia has highly dynamic pages hard to monitor and is susceptible to 'vandals.' Many cases are inaccurate as it lacks fast-fact checking systems. Wikipedia may not always have the truth. In fact, Jimmy Wales in a talk at TED said:

“If we say we are only going to write the truth about a topic, that doesn't do a damn bit of good in figuring out what to write 'cause I don’t really agree with you about what's the truth.”

On this issue a satirical comedian Stephen Colbert in The Colbert Report announced a neologism 'wikiality'. Colbert defined wikiality as "truth by consensus" (rather than fact).

Is the information in Wikipedia biased?

Before we get to the above question, we must understand what bias actually means. “It is an inclination to present or hold a partial perspective at the expense of (possibly equally valid) alternatives”. Is any information agreed by the majority always unbiased? Obviously not. Wikipedia articles are written by anonymous users who may or may not have a proper understanding in the subject. Wikipedia believes in being neutral, it claims to achieve it as the editors are a part of the general public and hence most of the articles are unbiased being agreed upon by the majority of people. As I said earlier, the information agreed upon by the majority need not always be unbiased. Moreover the community editing the pages is not evenly represented and hence the opinions of the minority are generally neglected. For example some surveys suggest that less than fifteen percent of Wikipedia’s hundreds of thousands of contributors are women, this automatically may make a few articles a bit gender biased.

The articles are written by a very small number of internet users. Hence the opinion and perspective of a person less exposed to the internet generally gets neglected. This might not happen if the articles are written by specialized scholars. The stress is on the point that the community editing the pages does not evenly represent  the different sections of society and  hence may not be neutral.

Wikipedia is also accused of being tainted with systemic bias. Since it is written by general public there is high weightage given to the pop-culture. Andrew Schlafly an American lawyer created Conservapedia accusing wikipedia to be liberal biased. Tim Anderson an Australian lecturer accused Wikipedia for being “U.S.-oriented biased”.

In April 2008 there was a concern among the Palestine advocacy about Israel-based biases in Wikipedia pages. Israeli diplomat David Saranga, when asked about these biases, said:

“It means only one thing: Israelis should be more active on Wikipedia. Instead of blaming it, they should go on the site much more, and try and change it”

Neutrality in this case can be only achieved if Israelis and Arabs are equally represented in Wikipedia.

In 2006 it was observed that lots of staffers of the US House of representatives started editing the Wikipedia to clean up their respective bosses' 'bios', and posted negative comments on the pages of their political opponents. This kind of activities make it hard for Wikipedia to maintain neutrality.

Wikipedia's 'anyone can edit' model has generated fostered interaction between people with different views and ideas. It has monopolized itself as a source of information and has become a major influence among the people. With various issues of biases, it may not be an ideal source but it has grown into one of the most powerful and influential websites. Being the  most visited reference sites effects of its influence is huge. Influencing the readers with its biases and inaccurate articles Wikipedia has become one of the most political 'Digital artifact' as a British philosopher Martin Cohen argued:

“To control the reference sources that people use is to control the way people comprehend the world. Wikipedia may have a benign, even trivial face, but underneath may lie a more sinister and subtle threat to freedom of thought.” 

- G Sujan Kumar

References:


[1]Guardian : Rightwing website challenges 'libral bias' of wikipedia

[2]New York Times : Wikipedia
[3]Your wiki entry counts

[4]Youtube : Jimmy Wales on Wikipedia
[5]Criticism of Wikipedia : A Compendium 
[6]New York Times : Wikipedia Marks Ten years of Edit-it-yourself

FileSharing to P2P - shaping politics through interactions

 A Short History
File Sharing has come a long way since it's humble beginnings in physical Exchange (through Punch Cards,Magnetic Tapes, Floppy Disks,etc,.).Tim Burners Lee originally envisioned the internet to be a network of users actively creating, editing and linking content to form a interconnected 'web' of links. This idea is very close to the P2P(peer-to-peer) ideal of computing which is an application architecture comprising of a distributed network of Computers where each node(computer) plays an active and equal role in the tackling of the workload or in other words where each 'peer' contributes a part of their processing power, Storage Space and Bandwidth to the other peers on the network without the need for a centralised and stable Host.


This methodology of Computer interaction (and consequently human interaction via computers) moves away from traditional Central Client-Server Architecture where Servers Supply and Clients consume.

The earliest examples of P2P implementation are the File Sharing systems where computers shared documents, music and Video content across networks which made it easier to share proprietary content.An inordinate amount of lawsuits against these systems followed in an attempt to regulate this.Ironically, however, this lead to the total elimination of any remaining centralisation in the systems and lead to what can be called the truly first P2P system - BitTorrent and the like.

Breaking Ground

With the rise of Torrent systems, sharing of content was released from control and regulation on the internet which lead to a more free and fluid exchange of media and ideas.Infact, some estimates by 2003 had reached the conclusion that distribution of Music through the torrent method using applications such as bittorrent and the like had already surpassed distribution through CDs - the primary file sharing method until then.

The Realisation of the P2P had thus led to the freedom of distribution of content,and ultimately has dealt a considerable blow to the idea of royalties or right to distribute.Thus P2P has shown itself to be a successful method of interaction,sharing resources and distributing the workload without a central, external regulator.

The potency of P2P interaction has been increasingly recognized in the recent years and can be seen in collaborative community projects such as Wikipedia and Free and Open Source Movements such as Linux.

P2P has evolved from the early file sharing days and has come to broadly covers three main concepts or ideas:
Peer Governance - where the organisation of the work and decision making processes are not centralised    but managed by community decisions.
Peer ownership - This refers to the idea of recognition of authorship of content generated by an individual but not the exclusive right to the content.
And finally Peer distribution.

What's Politics got to do with any of this?
 Since it's beginnings as a technological design, P2P has come a long way - it is now increasing being viewed more as a methodology rather than a technology. The Principles of P2P being independent from specific hardware and software constraints are helping shape interactions among people all over the world through removing the entry requirements for interaction across continents - A Computer with internet connection will do.

The P2P format has lent itself to political movements wherein people all over the world with different sets of views and expertise in different fields can combine and work towards the same goal under a common platform even though they may not share all their ideals and beliefs.Thus, P2P method has been successful in mobilizing a rather large number of people from every continent towards causes without traditional methods of information dissemination such as newspapers, television and relying instead on the internet media.

The P2P format has also resulted in a different kind of economic system where conventional Market based regulation is not the driving force but depending instead on the voluntary participation in creation of a common good for all(once again an example is Wikipedia).Thus P2P is quickly emerging as an alternate means to organisation and uniting people and could prove to be better in dealing with issues which affect people on a large scale,in other words political issues, through a truly collective and open decision process. Translation from Technology to Methodology is the true Achievement of this Artifact,changing the way politics is done - A shift from Power,Authority and centralisation to Community,Co-operation and decentralisation

By Barath A

References:
[1]
[2]
P2P and Human Evolution, pg 32-39 by Micheal Bauwens